Playing Hard: A Bad Boy Sports Romance by Eve Maddox

my head together. What the fuck is wrong with me lately?
    “What was all that about?” Reid asks, his expression confused. Despite the fact he’s the best tackler on the team, Reid doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. I don’t think he’s ever been in a fight.
    I shake my head. “Nothing,” I tell him. “Just Bryce being a dick, as usual.”
    Reid seems like he’s about to ask me another question, but then he shrugs it off. “Come on,” he says. “I found this girl and her friend, total hotties — and they say they’re the world’s biggest football fans.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “You know what that means.”
    Of course I know what that means. ‘World’s biggest football fans’ means free passes to get laid for any member of the team who wants it. 
    All at once, I remember that was the whole reason I came here in the first place — not to get in a fight with fuckwits like Bryce, but to get laid.
    So I follow Reid across the room to where these two girls are waiting for us, and they’re every inch as hot as he promised. Long black hair, long tanned legs, even in the middle of winter. Tiny denim skirts that barely cover their panties — that is, if they’re wearing any. Pretty sure I get a good eyeful of snatch when one of them crosses her legs. She looks at me meaningfully when she sees I noticed — she meant for me to notice.
    And I don’t feel a thing.
    Usually, I’d be rock hard in my jeans right now and putting the moves on her to get her upstairs and into the first empty bed I find.
    But not this time.
    This time, I can barely stay interested enough to follow the conversation, what little of it there is over the music. I just kind of tune it all out.
    There’s only one thing I can think of at the moment, and it’s Ava fucking Westwood.
    What the fuck is wrong with me?
    I have no idea, but it’s like she’s crawled under my skin or gotten into my blood or something. The only thing I can think of is those blue eyes flashing as she cussed me out, the way her pretty pink lips curled up in a snarl when she realized I’d brought Kara to our meeting.
    I like easygoing girls, simple girls who want the same things I want: sex, parties and booze. Girls who like me going down on them. Girls who’ll order a pizza and let me feed it to them. Girls who’re fans of the game and up for anything. Girls who’d go skinny dipping in a lake with me in the middle of the day, and not care who saw them.
    Ava Westwood is none of those things. She seems so uptight that she could probably shit a diamond.
    She can’t even admit she wants me. Instead, she just keeps denying it, as if I can’t see it with my own two eyes.
    Not to mention, this has got to be the lamest, weirdest situation I’ve ever been in. Pretending to date someone just so I don’t risk my draft pick status? Bullshit. As if any team would pass me up, reputation or not.
    “Hey, Riley? You in there?”
    Reid’s voice jerks me out of my thoughts, and I realize I haven’t listened to any of the conversation that’s been going on around me. He’s already standing up, his arm around one of the girls. The other is looking at me expectantly, raising an eyebrow.
    “I’m gonna take off,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I can think about what I’m saying. “See you later.”
    I stand up, turning away.
    What the fuck? my brain asks me, but it already knows the answer. My dick always overrides my brain, and this time is no exception. I’m just not feeling it, and the last thing I want to do right now is jump in the sack with some anonymous football groupie.
    Part of me wants to turn back around and go nail this girl, but for some reason I just keep going, weaving my way through the bodies that crowd the floor.
    “Hey, bro, wait up.”
    I hear Reid’s voice behind me as I reach the door, his hand grabbing my arm.
    “You all right?”
    “I’m fine,” I tell him, blowing air out of my mouth in frustration. “Totally fine. I’m